Letter on 2009 escape: 'I was so close'

Defendant accused of bank robbery, carjackings recounts flight from the law

January 06, 2013|By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

Emergency personnel tend to fugitive Robert Maday after the car he was driving crashed in West Chicago during a high-speed police chase. His 27 hours on the run in 2009 riveted Chicago. (Mike Anzaldi, For the Chicago Tribune)

Robert Maday allegedly had scored $32,000 in a bank robbery and was on his way to pick up a fresh getaway car. By nightfall the escaped convict hoped to be blissfully reunited with his girlfriend.

But as Maday sped through West Chicago that sunny fall morning three years ago, a police officer happened by, bringing an abrupt and violent end to a short but high-profile life on the run.

"The chase lasted only 40 seconds," Maday wrote in a letter to his girlfriend just weeks after his arrest in September 2009. "… Before the dust from the air bags ... cleared I had machine guns on me. Over. The crash blew my back out bad and rattled my brain. Lisa, I was so close. God I couldn't believe I was actually close to squeezing you tight."

Mayday's escape and the alleged crime spree that followed — two carjackings and the bank heist — riveted the Chicago area. It led to fallout in the Cook County state's attorney's office over the highly embarrassing incident that started when Mayday, in custody after pleading guilty to bank robbery, overtook two of the office's investigators as they drove him to the Rolling Meadows courthouse.

His two-page, hand-printed letter entered into evidence Friday by federal prosecutors provided the first detailed glimpse into his 27 hours on the run.

Maday's trial on escape, bank robbery and gun charges started last week in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

In opening statements, his attorney seemed to acknowledge an awkward challenge to the case — he can't argue that his client did not escape custody.

"I know what you're thinking," attorney Anthony Sassan told the jury. "How do you get out of custody and not have escaped?"

Instead, Sassan is focusing the defense in part on three gun charges that would significantly increase Maday's sentence if he is convicted. Sassan told the jury that prosecutors won't be able to prove Maday carried a gun when the bank was robbed.

Maday has appeared calm and pleasant in court during the trial. He wears collared shirts and occasionally slips on horn-rimmed glasses to look at paperwork.

The trial also included testimony from one of the Cook County investigators, Joseph Fallon. State's Attorney Anita Alvarez moved to fire Fallon and his partner, Nicholas Argentine, alleging that the escape succeeded as a result of several departmental rule violations on their part.

Fallon resigned but Argentine fought the firing. After a long legal battle, an independent arbitrator reduced his punishment to a 30-day suspension in 2011, according to the written decision. Argentine did not seek to have his job back, it said.

Fallon, who was driving the transport car, testified how the otherwise uneventful 90-minute ride from the Kankakee County Jail turned dangerous in seconds. Maday was being held in the jail on federal charges.

Fallon told the jury he was merging his Crown Victoria through busy morning traffic on Illinois Route 53 and had just glanced into his side-view mirror when he felt a tug.

In a flash, the .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun that had been holstered to his right hip was in Maday's hands, Fallon said.

Argentine, who has not testified at the trial and has never been quoted about the escape, told the Tribune last week that Maday's sudden movement led him to lunge back toward him.

"I elbowed him to push him back," said Argentine, who indicated he didn't realize Maday even had Fallon's gun until he wound up partially in the back seat himself during the struggle. "The gun was resting on my chest. I was half a step away from dying."

Fallon, who audibly sighed in court as he recounted Maday's takeover, testified that he then heard a chilling threat come from the back seat: "I'll shoot you both. I'll kill you both."

Maday then allegedly forced the two to drive to a nearby Meijer's store, where he took Argentine's pants, gun and forced them to handcuff themselves together. When he walked into the store, the two men hurriedly unlocked the handcuffs with a key Fallon still had, according to the arbitration decision.

"I saw Maday walk through and I saw the doors close. That's when I told Joe, get the keys and hurry up," the decision quoted Argentine as testifying about the escape.

A short time later, Maday carjacked a woman in the parking lot but abandoned the car a short distance away, authorities allege. By the next morning, he pulled off a second carjacking in Hoffman Estates, taking another woman's Volkswagen Jetta, according to the charges.

Later that day, authorities allege, Maday used the investigators' stolen guns to hold up a First American Bank in Bloomingdale, the same branch he allegedly robbed a year earlier. Prosecutors allege he even told the teller that he was the wanted fugitive, according to court documents.

A few hours later, Maday was driving through West Chicago apparently on his way to buy a used car when the cops spotted him, according to his letter.

"All I needed was a car that wasn't being looked for by an army," he wrote.

After a high-speed chase with West Chicago police, the Jetta crashed into a pole and came to a rest in a shady spot surrounded by bushes and shrubs, authorities said.

Police recovered both weapons as well as a wad of cash that was stuffed inside his pockets, according to testimony at his trial.

The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.

In his three-year-old letter to his girlfriend, Maday, now 42, seemed to suggest he understood his fate.

"I will be an old man when I come home," he wrote. "58. 60. 62. 70. … I almost succeeded Lisa. Please remember that. I really was close."